


Little Omen

by LovelessWorld



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:00:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22635553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelessWorld/pseuds/LovelessWorld
Summary: He didn't understand why his mother was screaming. Why at this ungodly hour?
Kudos: 4





	Little Omen

**Author's Note:**

> Haha.........ha. I promise Leo is my favorite character I pRoMiSe

The moon was new the night he found out he was bad luck.

Perhaps it was not "night," but the wee hours of the morning, when eerie silence draped itself over the little village. Darkness seeped through every window and door, invading every shabby house except one. At least a dozen candles were lit, surrounding the few souls that dared keep conscious at such an hour--a woman in her late twenties, her husband, and a single midwife. The woman, small and pale from head to toe, shrieked and sobbed as she held tight to her husband's sturdy hand, her voice splitting holes in the night's quiet like a jagged knife through thin skin. In the next room was her firstborn, Leo, his little hands clamped tight over his ears. He didn't understand why his mother was screaming. Why at this ungodly hour?

His mother's belly had grown bigger and bigger over the past months. She told him there was a baby inside, a little sister or brother who would be his best friend. He wondered if they really would, because all the other children avoided him even though he hadn't hurt them. 

At least he didn't think he had.

But as his mother screamed and her second child entered the world, Leo felt something heavy and sick in the air--something wrong, very wrong. His mother's voice was almost animal, howling like a wolf at the moon. The moon wasn't out tonight, though; she couldn't bear witness to a night so disturbed, Leo just knew she couldn't. He was only five, and he hardly understood anything, but he knew something was wrong. Something was deeply, horribly wrong on this night.

Finally-- _finally_ \--after hours of gut-wrenching noise, little Leo heard his mother's cries disappear into the air, leaving the night still and clear. Leo's heartbeat slowed, tiny hands trembling. Was it over? Was his mother okay? 

Leo tossed the blanket he'd been hiding under aside and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him (which wasn't fast at all). He thumped clumsily out the door of his and his parents' shared room, stopping short and stumbling before he reached the one other room in their tiny house. 

_Wait._

Something was still wrong. 

"I'm so sorry, Lucinda," the midwife's voice was so quiet it was barely audible. "There was nothing I could do."

Leo's eyes widened. The baby was supposed to be crying, not his mother. What was the midwife talking about?

"Mama? What's wrong?"

His mother gasped when he walked in. She looked like a ghost, her dark eyes and the circles around them shocking against her pallid, tear-stained face. "Oh, Leo, what are you doing up?" He barely detected the way her voice shook; she sounded as sweet as ever. "Go back to bed, baby."

"But mama--"

"Please, Leo, please go," Her voice broke this time and she leaned onto her husband's shoulder--she looked so tiny and weak, so tired. Leo's father looked down at him with sad, droopy eyes, holding the crying woman as though he couldn't bear to let go. "Go back to bed, Leo. We'll talk in the morning."

His father's words sounded so absolute, Leo couldn't bring himself to disobey. As he turned to leave the room, he noticed the bundle in the midwife's arms...his little sibling.

It was completely still.

But Leo was only five, and he barely understood anything.

☆

The next morning, his father explained that the baby died.

It was a hard thing to explain to a child--Leo would understand that later. But as little as he knew then, he realized that the baby was gone, or rather, that it had never been alive in the first place. 

He and his parents held a funeral for the baby--it was only them and the midwife, and her apprentice, and it was just behind their house, but it was a funeral nonetheless. Leo's father buried the baby, and his mother sat before the grave and cried and prayed. She held him close for a long time, her tears soaking into his long, unruly hair, and his father cried silently beside them while the midwife and her apprentice stood by and observed, as if only there to document the event.

"Mama," Leo asked, his voice muffled by his mother's shoulder. "What's the baby's name?"

His father glared. "Leo--"

"Shh, Peter," she put a hand on her husband's arm to quiet him. "Her name was Olivia, sweetheart. Your little sister's name was Olivia."

"Nn..." he didn't know what else to say. He knew he couldn't comfort his mother, but he thought if the baby had a name she would feel better. 

Or maybe she felt worse. Leo couldn't really say. 

When his father led his mother inside some time later, Leo remained next to Olivia's little gravestone, attempting to write her name in the dirt--he wasn't very good yet, but he knew his letters. That was when he heard it.

"If you ask me," the midwife's apprentice said, her blue eyes sharp and dangerous as they zapped toward Leo. "He's _got_ to be the cause. You've heard what they say--Peter and Lucinda's boy is cursed. He's a devil child."

"Now, Abigail," The midwife chastised. "He's only a child."

"So what? You can't really think I'm wrong. You said the baby had red eyes, Teacher--that alone is a bad sign. The boy must be an omen, or else this wouldn't have happened to poor Lucy!"

Leo didn't move. He didn't run, or yell, or do anything--he couldn't. He hurt Olivia? How? It wasn't his fault the voices chose to talk to him and nobody else, and even if it was, they'd never mentioned Olivia. 

But still, something in him twisted and writhed like poisonous snakes, sinking their fangs into his gut. There was a name, a face, a voice--it was like a silhouette in a thick fog, disappearing just before he could reach it. A pretty red eyed woman, with long black hair like his. She looked like Olivia might have, if her eyes really were red like the midwife claimed.

But just as quickly as she entered his mind, she left, swallowed up by darkness and a sick feeling in his bones, a feeling like....

Like it was all his fault.

_You did this._

_You killed her._

Leo gagged on that sick feeling, coughing and spitting onto the dirt. He beat the ground with his little fists, screaming his throat raw. He clawed at the skin of his legs and then at his scalp, pulling violently at his hair and sobbing. It couldn't be his fault! He didn't do anything! It wasn't his fault!

But it was. That red eyed woman died because of him. He didn't know how, but she did, and so did Olivia. They were the same, but they were different--and they no longer existed, all because of him.

Leo's mother rushed out of the house, hobbling toward him despite her husband's protests. She tried to hold him, asking over and over again what was wrong. His father followed, and attempted to calm him down. But Leo kept crying. He kept screaming and flailing, and passersby in their small village stared as the frightened parents managed to get the struggling boy inside.

He kept saying "it's my fault." He never told his parents what he meant, not even hours or days after it happened--they didn't ask either. Years after they were both gone he would dream about the woman, her voice a comfort in Leo's lonely, sickening little world.

One morning he woke up with a song in his ears and a name on his lips. 

_Lacie._


End file.
